Confessions of a Beachcomber - Edmund James Banfield (suggested reading txt) 📗

sad event, the messenger in the meantime having returned. The letter was duly credited with having conveyed the particulars. Is it not obvious, however, that the news had been transmitted orally, and that the crude carvings on the stick merely indicated an attempt to give verisimilitude to the intelligence--the wavy line indicating the creek, and the notch the fatal waterhole. If not, then a black's message-stick is a model of literary condensation, their characters marvels of comprehensiveness and exactitude.

Another letter is before me--one of the best specimens with regard to workmanship I have ever seen. Upon one edge of a piece of brown wood 6 inches long, 1 inch broad, flat and rounded off at the edges and ends, there are five notches, and on the opposite edge a single notch. Close to the end is a faint, crude representation of a broad arrow, below which is a confusion of small cuts, in a variety of angles, none quite vertical, some quite horizontal. On the reverse is a single--almost perpendicular--cut, and a bold X, and near the point, two shallow, indistinct diverging cuts. So far no one to whom the letter has been submitted has given a satisfactory reading. Blacks frankly admit that they do not understand it. They examine it curiously, and almost invariably remark--"Some fella mak' em." No attempt to decipher it is undertaken, because no doubt it was never intended to be read. Yet a plausible elucidation is at hand. The single notch, let it be said, represents a black who wishes to let five white fellows (who have made inquiries in that direction) know that a corrobboree is to begin before sundown, the setting sun being represented by the broad arrow, which seems to dip over the end of the stick. The guests are expected to bring rum to produce a bewildering, unsteady effect upon the whole camp--none, big or little, but will stagger about in all directions and finally lie down. On the other hand the guests are not to bring "one fella" policeman with handcuffs (the cross), otherwise all will decamp--the two last are seen vanishing into space. By a rare coincidence this very free interpretation could be made to apply to an actuality at the time the "letter" was received, but as a matter of fact it came from quite a different source to the black fellow who had engaged to let some students of the aboriginal character know when the next corrobboree would take place. It still remains undecipherable. My investigations do not support the theory that the blacks are capable of recording the simplest event by means of a system of so-called picture-writing, but rather that message-sticks have no meaning apart from verbal explanations. Blacks profess to be able to send messages which another may understand, but the tests applied locally invariably break down.

Another message-stick was made on the premises by George, but not to order. A genuine, unprompted natural effort, it is merely a slip of pine, 4 inches long, a quarter of an inch broad and flat, upon which are cut spiral intersecting grooves. George's birthplace is Cooktown, and his message-stick resembles in design that brought by Mattie from Bo'sun of Cooktown for Mickie of the Palms. Now George professes to be able to write English, but he is so shy and diffident over the accomplishment that neither persuasion nor offer of reward induces him to practise it. When he produced the "letter," more than usual interest was taken in it, for it seemed to offer an exceptional opportunity for ascertaining the extent of his literary pretensions. I asked him--"Who this for, George?" George looked at the stick long and curiously with a puzzled, concentrated expression, as one might assume when examining a novel and interesting problem demanding prompt solution. With an enlightening smile he in time replied--"This for Charlie."

"Charlie" is the name of a boy who recently visited the island, but who hitherto had not been known by George.

"Well, what this letter talk about?" A very long pause ensued during which George appeared to be putting his imaginative powers to frightful over-exertion. His forehead wrinkled, his lips twitched, his head moved this way and that, once or twice a gleam of inspiration passed over his face, and then the expression of the deep and puzzled thinker came on again. Finally he said--"Y-e-e-s. Me tell 'em, sometimes me see Toby."

Toby is the tallest of the survivors of Dunk Island, another acquaintance of George's, who refers to him as a hard case, for it is said Toby's affections are very fitful and uncertain.

"Then that letter tell 'em something more?" The strenuous pause, the desperate plunge into thought again, and George continued--"This for Johnny Tritton, before alonga Cooktown; now walk about somewhere down here. Might be catch 'em alonga mainland!"

This message-stick was freshly made, and its meaning, had it possessed any, might have been repeated pat. But it was evident that the boy was putting a devastating strain upon an unexuberant and tardy wit when he endeavoured to ascribe to it a literary rendering. His hesitancy and contradictions were at least amusingly ingenuous.

Exceptional opportunities were available in this neighbourhood recently for the formation of an opinion upon the value of message-sticks for the transmission of intelligence. The bushman who on horseback carried His Majesty's mails inland among the settlers and to distant stations, was frequently also entrusted with the delivery of message-sticks by blacks along the route. Invariably the stick was accompanied by a verbal communication--a request for some article (a pipe, a knife, looking-glass, handkerchief) or an inquiry as to the whereabouts or welfare of some relative or friend. The mailman quickly found that the often elaborately graven stick was to no purpose whatever without the verbal message. Frequently the sticks would become far more hopelessly mixed up than the babes in PINAFORE; but as long as he recollected the message aright, not the slightest concern or dissatisfaction was manifested.



HOOKS OF PEARL

In this neighbourhood the making of pearl-shell fishhooks is one of the lost arts. The old men may tell how they used to be made, but are not able to afford any satisfactory practical demonstration. Therefore, to obtain absolutely authentic examples, it was necessary to indulge in the unwonted pastime of antiquarian research. During an unsystematic, unmethodical overhauling of the shell heap of an extensive kitchen midden--to apply a very dignified title to a long deserted camp-- interesting testimony to the diligence and patience of the deceased occupants was obtained. It was evident that the sea had been largely drawn upon for supplies, if only on account of the many abortive and abandoned attempts at fishhooks in more or less advanced stages of completion. The brittleness of the fabric and the crudeness of the tools employed had evidently put the patience of the makers to severe task, who for one satisfactory hook must have contemplated many disappointments. The art must be judged as critically by the exhibition of its failures as by its perfections, as Beau Nash did the tying of his cravats. "Those are our failures," the spirits of the departed, brooding over the site of the camp, might have sighed, as we sorted out crude and unfashioned fragments. Presently the discovery of a small specimen established the standard of perfection--a crescent of pearl, which alone was ample recompense for the afternoon's research. Smaller than the average hook, it represented an excellent object-lesson in patience and skill. Many other examples, some complete, have since been found, and have been arranged for illustration to exhibit the process of construction in several stages. Do they not confirm the opinion that the maker of shell fish-hooks suffered many mishaps and disappointments, and that he had high courage in discarding any that evidenced a fault?

The method of manufacture was to reduce by chipping with a sharp-edged piece of quartz a portion of a black-lip mother-of-pearl shell to a disc. A central hole was then chipped--not bored or drilled--with another tool of quartz. The hole was gradually enlarged by the use of a terminal of one of the staghorn corals (MADEPORA LAXA) until a ring had been formed. Then a segment was cut away, leaving a rough crescent, which was ground down with coral files, and the ends sharpened by rubbing on smooth slate.

Discs were also cut out of gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell, but by what means there is no evidence to tell. When such a prize as a gold-lip shell was found, it was used to the last possible fragment. Most frequently the black-lip mother-of-pearl was the material whence the hooks were fashioned, and, when none other was available, the hammer oyster. In one case an unsuccessful endeavour had been made to fashion a hook from a piece of plate-glass, obtained, no doubt, from the wreck of some long-forgotten ship. The fractured disc lying among other relics of the handicraft spoke for itself.

Not only have many samples of partially-made hooks been found, but also the tools employed in the process. The sharp-edged fragment of quartz used to chip away the shell, the anvil of soft slate upon which the shell rested during the operation, the quartz chisel for chipping the central hole, the coral terminals, resembling rat-tail files, and the smooth stone upon which the rough edges of the hook were ground down and finished.

Hooks without barbs and manufactured of such materials as pearl-shell and tortoiseshell may throw light upon the Homeric quotation "caught fish with the horn of the ox." In those far-off days, bronze wire rope, similar in design to the steel rope which is of common use in the present time, was employed. Ancient Greeks, though they anticipated one of the necessities of trade nowadays, depended upon fish-hooks resembling those just being abandoned by the Australian blacks. Fish are guileless creatures. They are captured today with hooks of the style upon which fishermen of the Homeric age depended.

From the appearance of the camps, and the age of the islander who took part in the various searches, and who was ready to admit that though pearl-shell hooks were used when he was a piccaninny he had never seen one made, I judge the age of these relics of a prehistoric art to be between thirty and forty years.

This boy has supplied samples of hooks made by himself with the aid of files, etc., in imitation of the old style, being careful to explain that the old men made them much better than any one could in these degenerate days of steel. Two of these modern hooks bound to bark lines are illustrated. What was the origin of the peculiar pattern of the pearl-shell fish-hooks? To this question, those who maintain that no handiwork of man exists which does not borrow from nature, or from something precedent to itself, may find a satisfactory answer offhand. As it weathers on the beach, the basal valve of the commonest of the oysters, of these waters occasionally assumes a crude crescent. Indeed, several of these fragments have at odd times attracted attention, for they have so closely resembled pearl-shell hooks in the rough that second glances have been necessary to dispose of the illusion that they were actually rejects from some old-time camp. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the original design was copied from this elemental model, as, in like manner the boomerang is traceable to a leaf? The pattern is so profoundly persistent in the minds of the blacks of to-day, that in fashioning a hook from a piece of straight wire they invariably form a crescent, though the superiority of the shape approved by civilisation must have been exemplified to them times out of number. In this particular the blacks seem unconsciously to follow the idea of their ancestors as birds obey instinct in the building